Survey: Britons lie about seeing films

LONDON, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A survey suggests "The Godfather" and its sequels are the classic films Britons are the most likely to claim to have seen without actually watching the movies.

The survey, conducted by Orange mobile phone company, found one in five respondents admitted telling people they had seen Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning 1972 film and is sequels despite having never seen them, The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.

The phone company said its survey also found Britons often lied about seeing "Dirty Dancing," "The Shawshank Redemption," "Rocky," "Gone With the Wind" and "Citizen Kane."

"People want to claim to have seen the weighty and intelligent films that they actually haven't," Helen O' Hara of Empire Magazine said of the survey. "The Godfather tends to top most critics' lists, so it is the film people most feel they should have seen. It is a generalization, but men are more likely to see having opinions on films as a status symbol, whereas women don't have such a tick-list approach."